Florida v. Thomas, Robert A. (06/04/2001)

By: Douglas Kiker, Medill News Service

Questions presented

Can police conduct a warrantless search of a car if the car's occupant emerged from the vehicle before any contact with the officer?

Brief

Robert Thomas was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

On Feb. 28, 1997, Thomas drove up to a house in Lakeland, Fla., where police officers were making arrests for illegal drug violations. Thomas pulled up to the house, parked, and stepped out of his car. Officer J.D. Maney of the Polk County Sheriff's narcotics unit met him at the end of the car.

Officer Maney asked Thomas for his driver's license, which Thomas provided. A computer check showed that Thomas was wanted for violating probation. Thomas was immediately arrested for the parole violation, and taken inside the residence where the other arrests were taking place.

Although unaware of any narcotics inside Thomas' car, Officer Maney subsequently searched the vehicle and found several plastic bags, which tests later showed contained methamphetamine. The total time between when Thomas exited the vehicle and the plastic bags were found was five minutes.

Thomas was subsequently charged with possession of methamphetamine andpossession of drug paraphernalia.

Prior to trial, Thomas' attorney argued that evidence found in the car should be inadmissible because Thomas was not in his car when Officer Maney first had contact. The officer, therefore, had conducted an unreasonable search of the automobile, Thomas claimed. Judge Robert Pyle agreed, and barred the evidence from inside the car.

The state, which had already reached an agreement with Thomas regarding the probation violation charges, immediately appealed to the Second District Court in Lakeland.

A unanimous state appeals court panel reversed, saying that since Thomas had already been arrested, the search of his vehicle was legal, and evidence of the drugs should have been admissible at trial.

Thomas appealed to the Florida Supreme Court. On Oct. 14, 1999, Florida's highest court reversed by a 6-0 vote.

[One of the Florida Supreme Court justices, Peggy Quince, recused herself from the case. Before being named to the state's highest court, she was one of the three judges on the Second District Court who heard the Thomas case.]

As the trial judge had ruled, the Florida Supreme Court concluded that since Thomas had gotten out of his car by his own volition before any contact with Officer Maney, the search was illegal.

""It is indeterminable from the present record whether Thomas was aware of the presence of Officer Maney or whether Thomas was exiting the car on his own volition without being cognizant of Officer Maney,"" wrote Justice Major Harding for the court.

In its decision, the Florida Supreme Court addressed the reasoning of the lower court's decision. The state appeals court had relied heavily on a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, New York v. Belton, which says that if police arrest an occupant of an automobile, they may search the car incident to the arrest. That ruling established a so-called ""bright-line"" rule so officers would know when they could, or could not, search a vehicle.

A previous U.S. Supreme Court decision, Chimel v. California, had established some guidelines for post-arrest searches. Officers could conduct searches to remove weapons the arrestee might have and to protect evidence from tampering. The Belton case, in part, resolved some of the questions surrounding post-arrest searches of automobiles.

However, the Florida Supreme Court said in its decision that in order for a car search to be legal, it still had to reach the Chimel standard.

""When searches occur beyond the scope of Belton's bright-line intent, the factors in Chimel of officer safety and evidence preservation must be present in order for a search incident to arrest to be lawful,"" wrote Harding.

The court also said that the Chimel standard had not been met in searching Thomas' car because, ""We are unable to ascertain whether Officer Maney's safety was endangered or whether the preservation of evidence was in jeopardy,""

Justice Charles Wells concurred with the majority in part, but wrote a brief dissent in which he disagreed with the majority's interpretation that the Belton standard be applied, ""to situations where the defendant has exited the vehicle because of the presence or upon the direction of a law enforcement officer.""

Florida Attorney General Robert Butterworth appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

John Klawikofsky, assistant attorney general of Florida, said the state hopes the Supreme Court will define more clearly when searches of automobiles are allowed.

""We are hoping the court will clarify this spilt (between Chimel and Belton) and there will be just one standard,"" said Klawikofsky.

On Jan. 8, 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in the case and allowed Thomas to proceed in forma pauperis.

On June 4, 2001, a unanimous Court dismissed the order accepting the case, finding that the justices had improvidently granted the certiorari in the case. The opinion, written by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, concluded that the Florida courts had not yet issued a final appealable order.